Without these dear friends of mine it would just be a skeleton of a city, a beautiful one at that, but lacking heart and soul. It would be fun to visit for a few days, but fun is not exactly fulfilling.
I remember now how alone I felt the first few months of my exchange, and how that all changed when I found my church--or rather the people in it. I think God said it best: "It is not good that man should be alone," (and, I will add, especially in Paris). Entering into relationship with these friends changed the tenor of my exchange completely. It went from something of a personal struggle to a journey undertaken with friends--each of us with our own yokes and burdens, but made bearable by the fact that there's someone in the same boat (or hiking boots?) right next to us.
That said, being back here has reminded me of something that I've been thinking about a lot lately: God is relational.
Given that, these broken but beautiful human relationships ultimately point us back to God. There's something in each of my friends--here or back home--that reflects God, be it generosity, hospitality, service, wisdom, love, thoughtfulness, or grace. Further, the whole process of journeying with others is reminiscent of what our relationship with God looks like: we struggle and fight (i.e. Jacob and God), we break hearts and are forgiven (i.e. God and Israel as manifested by Hosea and Gomer), we share in joy and hardship (i.e. Disciples and Jesus), we surrender and sacrifice (i.e. Jesus in the garden), we trust and take chances (i.e. Mary), we serve and are served (i.e. washing of the disciples feet), etc. And while these relationships reflect our own with God, it's the the imperfections in human relationships that most directly point to God. He fills in those spaces that we can't. We'll always be a bit selfish in our service, we'll never be able to forgive fully, we'll never love completely sacrificially, and we'll never fully die to ourselves. But that's why, as much as the good and the pure aspects of our friends and relationships point to God, it's our personal and relational shortcomings that best reflect His glory--because he picks up where we leave off.
As much as that may be a bit abstract, I truly believe that when we commune with friends we commune with God. And when we love our friends and experience their love, we grow in love and appreciation for God, as he is the one who made this whole relationship thing possible.
I was reading an article today in the New York Times that says something similar, but much more eloquently. The author was talking about Anselm, a 11th century theologian / monk / philosopher who developed a proof of God's existence from ideas alone which states that "A true concept of God, 'a being than which nothing greater can be conceived,' would have to be a God that exists. Therefore, God exists." This author made the pointed observation that:
The God he conjured in proof he had learned from his friends. The fullness, the absence, the solitude and the hunger — I recognized myself. The answer I found in his proof is no answer at all, no truly abstract, autonomous assurance that I can have all to myself. I have to stitch it out of memories, hopes and loved ones, as he did. It is no self-thinking thought; it’s a pleasure built out of language and sharing.
Setting off for a new place, I was saddled in the past, in what I had been and done. My conversion, and with it God, is not a thing I can live down, but something I’ll always have to live in, through and around. The very fact of it, that it happened at all, is a proof for its own ongoing existence.
And that, my friends, is how we experience God--not through ideas or thoughts or logic alone--but "out of memories, hopes and loved ones."
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